By: Salim Zaweed
This
seminar is on the legacy of communal harmony in India’s history and culture,
I thought I would speak on how the
Mughal religious policies and its various aspects has been looked at into the possible and manageable
manner to test with the evidence we have in the
contemporary Persian sources. Basically, it is a survey of policies what
has been held to be the major features
for maintaining communal harmony by the Mughal emperors.
It
is quite a ‘modern’ trend to place the roots of communal tensions and violence
at the doorsteps of the ‘medieval’
period, and blame it all on a ‘medieval mindset’. This trend is discernible not only in journalistic works,
but also reflected in some serious scholarship.1 The notion of majority and minority communities, according
to Romila Thapar, is a modern,
nineteenth century notion, based on the idea of numbers and of
representation with reference to the
numbers following a particular religion. The treatment of Hindu2 and Muslim
society as monoliths by historians, she
says, has tended to ignore the more important questions about these societies such as, how do various
religious groups perceive each other?3
Muzaffar
Alam in one of his papers has shown that the scale of coordination between the Hindu and Muslim under the Mughals was
such that ‘many of the local Hindu elites
began to identify themselves, to a certain degree, not simply with the
Mughal State system, but also with the
Mughal Persian culture’. This, according to him, can be explained by the ‘religious and cultural traditions’ as they
matured and grew in medieval times.4
The
young seventeen year old conqueror of Sindh, Muhammad ibn Qasim (r.711- 715),
had stated that the Hindus should be treated in the same way as the ahl
al-kitab5 in the central regions of the
Muslim world.6 During the fifteenth century, the processes of Hindu Muslim
rapprochement or coming together had moved in the intellectual and cultural
fields as well as in the political
sphere. Kabir, Nanak and many others bhakti saints had opened their doors to all, irrespective of their
faiths, rejecting differences based on scriptural authority and traditions. Politically, in
many of the provincial kingdoms, such as Gujarat, Malwa and Kashmir we find Hindus being given
appointments not only at the local but also
at the central level. Under the Lodis, some Hindu rajas were raised to
the positions of amirs.
The
rise of Hemu to a premier position after the death of Islam Shah was a
reflection of this process.
When
the Mughals came to power in 1526 they took over many of the religious organizations established under the previous
Turkish and Afghans dynasties which had ruled
northern India from the time of Mahmud of Ghazni.7 During Babur’s short
reign little time remained for a change in
the religious offices. Humayun largely followed the inherited practices.
With
Akbar, the period of changes begins. Akbar’s ideologue Abul Fazl prepared
a working manual (dastur al-amal) for
his officials with advice on how to protect the principles of justice and equity (itidal) and of
non-interference in matters of the faith of the people. “And you [the state officials] should not
interfere (ta arruz) in any person’s religion. For, if a wise person in a transient mundane matter
does not go for a thing that harms, how can he
then choose loss in a matter of faith, which pertains to the world of
eternity? If he is right then [when you interfere in his religion] you oppose
the truth; and if you have the truth with
you and he is unwittingly on the wrong side, he is a victim of ignorance
and [therefore] deserves compassion and
help, not interference and resistance. You should be kind, beneficent and friendly to all.8
He
proved his intention of creating possibilities for a peaceful coexistence between the different religious groups of his empire,
first by forbidding the enslavement of the wives and children of rebellious villagers in
15629, remitting pilgrimage-tax at Mathura and other sacred places in 156310 and jazya11 in
156412, likewise, restrictions against the building of places of public worship were removed. In the
same year, he gave the first land grant to the
temples of Vrindaban which continued for the Aurangzeb’s period also.13
Furthermore, there was a natural
temptation for the State to tax cattle herds (gāu shumārī) or levy grazing
duty (kāh charāī). We have several
imperial farmāns where the exemption was given over these taxes. Thus a farmān of Akbar of March 1581
granting exemption to Radha- Vallabhi priest
Birthalrai ‘Brahman’ seated at Gokul to graze his cattle without any
constraint both in the khālisa (imperial
reserve territory) and in the jāgīrs.14 Then there were farmāns of 1588
and 1593 where the exemption was given
to grazing the bulls and cows of Govardhan, Mathura, Sahar, Mangtola and other places.15 This
policy is also continued under the successive reigns. Early in 1658 Dara Shikoh
issued an order to remit gāu-shumārī on the cattle of the Govind Dev temple of Vrindaban. In 1659 under
Aurangzeb an order was issued addressed to
officials of pargana Mahaban remitting gāu-shumāarī on the cows of the
Govind-Dev, Gopinath and Madan Mohan
temples (all of Vrindaban), grazing in the vicinity of Man Sarovar.16 Not only that, he remitted more
than 80 customary taxes early in his reign, in
Khafi Khan’s words, to ‘alleviate suffering’ caused the people by war
and drought17 included rahdari
(road-toll), pandari (on commercial real estate, from the street vendor to the
banker), buz-shumari (on goats), bargadi
wa charai (on grazing), banjarah (on petty grain merchants), and tawanah (on Sufi ‘urs and
Hindu jatra festivities).
Akbar’s attempts to seek a reconciliation between Hinduism and Islam becomes clear from his numerous marriages with Rajput ladies- beginning with the daughter of Bharmal Kachhawaha in 1564.18 The ladies were allowed to continue their customs and their worship inside the palace, which is evident from numerous available contemporary literary sources and paintings. The mothers of Jahangir and Shahjahan were both Rajputs women. In 1583 he ordered that no wife should be forced to follow her husband on the funeral pyre.19 This action went together with Akbar’s attempt to raise Hindus to high positions. Birbal, who had joined Akbar soon after his accession and enjoyed great favour with him, was not prevented from carrying with him and worshipping idols while he accompanied Akbar. The keeping of the revenue records had always been a domain of the Hindus, such as Todar Mal, was appointed minister of finance for the first time.20 This attitude changed dramatically in Akbar’s time in 1594-95, we find 8 Hindus among the twelve provincial finance ministers.21
Many
painters who lived at Akbar’s court were Hindus whose style was
increasingly refined under the influence
of Persian artists, and many of their miniature paintings and illustrations of the great epics are of
breathtaking beauty.22 The Hindus Govardhan and
Basawan were among Akbar’s most appreciated artist.23
One should not forget that a considerable
number of Hindu writers enjoyed Akbar’s
patronage, and Sanskrit learning was encouraged by the court.24
Scholarly works, especially the
treatises about astrology, were appreciated by the Mughals up to the reign of
Shahjahan. Other Hindus use Hindi for
their poetic works, such as the great Tulsidas, a friend of Akbar’s leading commanders, the khan-i khāna and Man
Singh, appear several times among those
honoured by the rulers.25
The
mystical aspect of Hinduism proved quite attractive to the Mughal rulers.
We have several paintings show scenes of
meeting between the ruler and a yogi, in particular to Akbar, Jahangir and Dara Shikoh. We read that
Ganga Rishi came to Akbar during his stay in
Kashmir, and Jahangir was fascinated by the yogi Jadrup Gosain in Ujjain
in 1617 and Mathura as he tells in his
Tuzuk26.
In
his new capital, an ībadatkhāna (house of worship) was erected in 1575. There
the emperor could listen to the debates
between theologians and representatives of the different schools of Islamic thought and practices to
the sole objective was “to ascertain the Truth and discover the reality”. At beginning, the
ībadatkhāna debates were open exclusively to
Muslims. From 1578, Akbar opened the doors of debate to members of the
other religions of the subcontinent-
Hindus, Jains, Zoroastrians and from 1580 onwards, some Christians. The meetings were held on Thursday and Fridays.
But the constant quarrel and the desire to
establish their superiority over the others, brought growing discredit
and upset to Akbar and closed the
ībadatkhāna debate practically in 1581, but finally in 1582. The purpose was
to persuade the leaders of different
sects and faiths to abjure their differences, and to arrive at commonly accepted truths, such expectation
was not likely to be fulfilled. However, the
debates had two important consequences: first, they convinced Akbar that
all religions had elements of truth, and
that all of them led to the same Supreme Reality. These understanding led to the evolution of the concept of sulh-i
kūl or peace between all religions.
Akbar
believed that communion with God was possible by turning oneself to Him through meditation. Likewise, he considered
slavish imitation or taqlid of traditional
practices to be unnecessary for a true believer. In 1581, the Dīn-i
Ilahī, also called Tauhīd-i Ilahī, was
promulgated.27 It was an order or brotherhood rather than a new religion.28
The charge against Akbar that he
renounced Islam is buttressed by the Jesuit Fathers such Monserrate29 and orthodox Muslims like
Badauni30, the Dīn-i Ilahī seemed to mean that ‘the emperor had willingly and wittingly left
Islam and now posed as the founder of a new
religion’31. According to I. H. Qureshi, ‘Akbar did not ask his
followers to abjure Islam, as has been
wrongly asserted by some historians, but he asked them to abjure the orthodox
form of it’.32 Abul Fazl means the
concept to Akbar ‘being the spiritual guide of the people’, has been discussed in a section in the Āin-i
Akbari as‘Āin rahnamūnī’, which has been wrongly translated by Blochman as “Ordinances of the
Divine Faith”.33 He also quotes two of the
sayings of Akbar: “By guidance is meant indication of the road, not the
gathering together of disciples...” and
“To make a disciple is to instruct him in the service of God, not to make
him a personal attendant”. These two
sayings reflect more accurately the spirit of Akbar’s claim to spiritual leadership.
It
is also important to note that, Akbar started enrolling disciples around 1580,
the time when he was distracted by
rebellions in the east which was supported by some of the orthodox ulema. His brother, Mirza Hakim, had
also advanced into the Punjab. This was also
the time when the Uzbek power in Central Asia had become menacing. In
this situation, Akbar wanted absence of
sectarian and religious strife in the country, and complete loyalty towards him on the part of nobility. J. F.
Richards, says “Discipleship was an extremely
effective means to assimilate a heterogeneous body of nobles and bind
them to the throne”.34 In other words Akbar created a tradition of implicit
loyalty to the Mughal throne. The Tauhīd
-i Ilahī was purely a political device. He was trying to build a state and
nobility which neither Hindus nor orthodox
Muslim and new polity based on the principles of liberalism, justice and equal treatment of all faiths.
The
madadd-i māsh or revenue free grants to the scholars, men engaged in
spiritual pursuits, indigent, widows and
respectable men without any employment, were held earlier only by Muslims. But under Akbar we have seen
that grants of land being given to the
temples of Vrindavan, and the jogis of Jakhbar. After 1580, the number
of non-Muslim grantees steadily
increased and rent-free grants were granted to Hindus, Jains, Parsis.35
Saints and ascetics who had no worldly
desires also began to receive cash grants in increasing numbers. Akbar built two establishments outside
Fathpur Sikri to feed poor Hindus and
Muslims. The one for the Hindus was called Dharmapura, and that for the
Muslims Khairpura.36 Thus, through the
above mentioned harmonious steps, he able to create a state became essentially secular and liberal in
matters of religion and state policy, and promoted cultural integration.
Jahangir
more or less stays on his father’s liberal attitude towards the Hindus. His
act of breaking an idol with a boar’s
head is well justified by him in his Tuzuk.37 Nevertheless, no temples were destroyed during his rule.
Under
Shahjahan, no proselytising activities of the Hindus were allowed. Hindu
poets lived at court and were highly
esteemed by the ruler- we need only to remember
Chandarbhan Brahman, Dara Shikoh’s secretary whose detailed descriptions
of the activities and peculiarities of Shahjahan’s
court are found in his Chahār Chaman or ‘Four Meadows’38. S. R. Sharma in his The Religious Policy of
the Mughal Emperors, enlisted an appendix of
Sanskrit writers of the Mughal period.39
The
period of Aurangzeb considered to be the most fanatic and puritan in relation
to the communal harmony. However recent
scholarly research done by historians like Satish Chandra, M. Athar Ali, and Richard M. Eaton
etc. shows that Aurangzeb has been the worst
victim of prejudiced writing in history. Whereas some feels that
Aurangzeb reversed the Akbar’s policy of
religious toleration and thus undermined the loyalty of the Hindus to the empire, in turn, leading to the popular uprising.
I start here with a quote from Jadunath
Sarkar’s, Studies in Mughal India, “From the strict path of a Moslem
king’s duty as laid down in the Quranic Law nothing could make him deviate in
the least. And he was also determined
not to let others deviate. Neither fear of material loss nor the influence of
a favourite, no tears or supplication,
could induce him to act contrary to the Shara (cannon law). Flatters styled him a living saint
(Alamgir zinda-peer)”.40 It is difficult to understand why, if the premises of the syllogism are in
favour of Aurangzeb, the conclusion has been
drawn against him. How far from the truth this allegation is can be
borne out by a study of the lives Holy
Prophet Mohammad (peace be on him) and his Khalifas. If Aurangzeb is a
strict follower of sharia than obviously
he didn’t forget the Divine command: “La ikraha fiddeen” or ‘no compulsion in
religion’, which was strictly followed by the Holy Prophet (peace be on him) and his Khalifas.41
Soon after his rise to power, he published
several religious regulations to please the
orthodox ulemas. In the eleventh year of his reign [1669], Aurangzeb
took a number of measures which have
been called puritanical, but many of which were of an economic and social character, or the against
superstitious beliefs or Islamic spirit. The forbidding of tika or saffron
paste on the forehead, public display of holi and muharram processions
were considered to be against the
Islamic spirit. Now we move to the other measures of Aurangzeb that may be called discriminatory or bigotry
towards other religions. At the outset of his rule, Aurangzeb issued several farmans42 to the
Brahmins of Banaras, Vrindavan etc regarding
temples and synagogues, that ‘long standing temple should not be demolished
but no new temples allowed to be built’.
Further, old places of worship could be repaired. Because Mughal treated temples lying within their
sovereign domain as a State property, accordingly they undertook to protect both the physical
structures and their Brahmin functionaries. When a subordinate non-Muslim officer, construct a
religious structure without prior permission or
showed signs of disloyalty—and especially if he engaged in open
rebellion—the state often desecrated the
temple(s) most clearly identified with that officer. Aurangzeb’s order regarding ban on new temples did not,
apparently lead to a large-scale destruction of temples. Secondly, the order appears to have applied
only to Banaras.
In
1669 over the complains of governors, he learnt that some of the temples in
Thatta, Multan and especially in
Banaras, both Hindu and Muslim used to come from great distances to learn the liberal or subversive ideas from
the Brahmans, which is not acceptable to the
orthodox elements. Then there were also several political opposition
from a number of quarters, such as the
Marathas, Jats etc. Aurangzeb issued orders to the governors of all provinces to put down such practices and to
destroy the temples where such practices took
place.43 As a consequence of these orders, a number of temples such as
the Keshava Rai at Mathura, Vishwanath
at Banaras were destroyed. According to Satish Chandra, ‘Aurangzeb’s selective destruction or bricking up a number
of Hindu temples, was either a warning to local
Hindu rajas or a reprisal for rebelliousness’44. Ma’āsir-i Ālamgīrī,
quotes the destruction of Kesava Rai
temple as “On seeing this instance of the strength of the Emperor’s faith and
the grandeur of his devotion to God, the
proud rajas were stifled, and in amazement they stood like images facing the wall”.45 It was in
this context that many temples built in Orissa during the last ten to twelve years were destroyed.
Furthermore, the destruction of several old
temples at Jodhpur46 and its parganas and in Udaipur47 was the result of
long standing war with Rathors and
Sisodiyas during 1679-80.48 However a more recent and critical analysis by Richard M. Eaton has proved that the
estimated number of such temples for the whole of the medieval period does not exceed 60 in all.49
He very ably examined this issue, where he dealt that which temples were desecrated? When and
by whom? How and for which purpose?50
It
is wrong to say that Aurangzeb bans the non-Muslims from practicing their
faith, as long as they shows their
loyalty to the ruler. Secondly, we did not have any farmān to the governors ordering the general destruction of
temples. Instead of that, we have several
instances of grants to Hindu temples and mathas by Aurangzeb. He gave
grants to the Gurudwara of Guru Ram Das
at Dehra Dun. Such grants continued to be given to some of the Vaishnava temples in Vrindavan, to the jogis
at Jakhbar in Punjab, to the Nathpanthi jogis
in sarkār Nagaur, and a grant of 100 pakka bighās of land to Panth
Bharati in pargana Siwana in Rajasthan.
Although an order had been issued in Gujarat in 1672 banning revenue
free
grants to Hindus.51 The reason behind this order was the malpractice of
assigning the revenue-free grants to the
rich Brahmins by the sadr or sadru-s sadur. When Aurangzeb had the temple of Keshav Rai at Mathura destroyed
in January 1670, this caused much alarm at
Vrindaban and Seo Ram Gusain went away from the town, carrying away the
idols at Govind-dev temple, which now
left Vrindaban forever.52 Yet, actually the documents we have do not even distantly refer to any
destruction or desecration affecting any of the temples at Vrindaban. On the other hand, in May 1671
in the middle of this period of alarm, Hasan
Ali Khan, the faujdar of Mathura, issued a parwāna directing that 135
bīghas of land held by the late Raja Jai
Singh of Amber on behalf of the Govind-dev temples, & c., under
imperial farmāns, should be maintained
as per status quo and no interference therein should occur.53 Seo Ram himself
returned in 1675 and set about looking after his properties in Mathura and Vrindaban.54
The
governor of Agra in an official order issued in 1704 credited Rūp and
Haridas, who were Chaitanya’s disciple, with
having established their residence in Vrindaban when it was all jungle and uninhabited.55 Thereafter
the succeeding Goswamīs and their followers
began buying land in village Dosaich and the surrounding hamlets,
numerous records of which are preserved
for us either in original or early copies in Persian as well as Devanagari.56 Alongside this process of land
acquisition there was a spate of temple
construction, which began to put even Mathura into the shade. This is
revealed by an official survey of
temples of Mathura and its environs undertaken in 1598 with a view to
establishing which temples deserved
imperial grants of land. The work is carried out by Abul Fazl with the help of four (named) pundits, and their
recommendations, as approved by Akbar, were set
forth in a singular farmān issued on 11 September 1598. Of the 35
temples recommended six were situated in
Mathura as against nineteen in the vicinity of Vrindaban.57 The Vrindaban documents show definitely that all existing
grants made by Akbar, Jahangir and Shahjahan to
Vrindaban and Mathura temples and priests were honoured under Aurangzeb
(1659-1707) as well.58
One
thing is important to note that Aurangzeb’s policy of newly built temple’s
destruction is merely a continuation of his predecessors. Shahjahan, issued
orders in 1632-33 for the destruction of
all Hindu temples recently built throughout his dominions.59 In the Banaras district, alone 76 temples were
destroyed in compliance with that order.60 The cause of the demolition was narrated as: “it was
reported to His Majesty (Shahjahan) that during the reign of the late Emperor (Jahangir), whose
place is in Paradise, the work of construction of many temples in Banaras was taken in hand,
but could not be completed, and that some of the wealthy people of the place wanted to
complete it, the Emperor, Defender of the Faith, issued orders that as in the case of Banaras, so in
other places in the Kingdom all temples which had newly came into existence (i.e. without
permission) should be demolished. During this period from the reports of the News Writer of the
Allahabad it appeared that 76 temples were razed to the ground in Banaras”.61
My
object in mentioning this is not to indicate that I am against religious
liberty, but to show that it was the
forerunner of coming events, namely, the Hindus began openly to practice oppression upon the Muslims; Muslim
women were forcibly taken in as wives in
their homes. More than this, they used to dismantle mosques and annex
them to their houses.62 Shaikh Ahmad
Sirhindi in his letters noted several episodes of mosque demolition and undue behaviour of Hindus.63 These facts
are explained in detail in the Shāhjahān-nāma,
quote and unquote: “When the Magnificent banner (of the Emperor Shahjahan)
reached the outskirts of Gujrat
(Punjab), a party of Saiyads and Shaikhs of that qasba complained that some infidels had kept for their use both
married and unmarried Moslem women; some of
them had annexed by for mosques to their houses. Upon this, the Emperor
directed Shaikh Mahmud Gujrati to
enquire into the matter and upon receipt of reliable evidence to rescue
the women and separate the mosques from
the houses. A thorough enquiry proved the truth of the complaints and Shaikh Mahmud Gujrati after
imposing a small fine upon the Hindus set at
liberty 70 women and restored to their original state the mosques which
had been forcibly annexed. When these
full facts reached to the ears of the Emperor, he ordained that in accordance with the old custom if anyone
(i.e., Hindu) embraced Islam, then a Muslim
woman kidnapped by him would be allowed to remain with him after proper
marriage. After the issue of this order,
a party of Hindus embraced Islam and married the women whom they had kept by force. It was also ordered by the
Emperor that wherever in his dominions such
events took place, the same decree should be followed”.64 In the Tuzuk,
we have also several examples where
Muslim girls were imprisoned.65
Look
at all of the facts carefully and objectively. So long as Shahjahan wielded
his power by force, the operation of the
Hindus remained under control. It will thus appear that from the time of Jahangir, or even perhaps
earlier, the Hindus were not allowed to construct a new temple without the permission of the
state. Shahjahan in order to enforce this policy had to order the demolition of many temples in
his dominions which had been built without
permission.
Thus
the Aurangzeb’s policy was merely a continuation of the policy of his predecessors. Any historian who ascribes the
policy underlying them to religious bias or
bigotry without examining thoroughly and impartially the political
situation of the day shows either
political short-sightedness or distorted historical version.
The
researches also show that Hindu nobles were not discriminated on the basis
of their religion. Athar Ali’s, The
Mughal Nobility Under Aurangzeb shows that the number of Hindus in the nobility during the second half
of Aurangzeb’s reign almost doubled with the
Hindus, including Marathas, forming about one-third of the nobility.66
During this period, the position of
Hindus would be clear from the data provided by him that: under Shahjahan (1628-58) out of the 437 nobles from 5000 to
1000 zāt, 98 were Hindu [means 22.4 per cent],
whereas under Aurangzeb (1658-1701), out of 575 nobles 182 were Hindu
[means 31.6 per cent].67 He also
inducted a large number of Marathas into the service during the latter half
of his reign. Of the 96 Marathas who
held ranks of 1000 zat and above between 1679 and 1707, 16 held ranks of 5000 and above, 18 held
ranks between 3000 and 4000 and 62 from 1000 to
2700, thus far surpassing the Rajputs. There is no doubt that the
expansion of the nobility under
Aurangzeb, particularly after 1681, brought about an increase of Hindus at all
levels of the army, nobility and
administration. Among the mansabdārs holding ranks above 500 zat the proportion of Hindus increased from 22
per cent under Akbar in 1595, to 32 per cent
under Aurangzeb in the period 1679-1707. In other words, the number of
Hindus in the imperial service
increased, both in absolute numbers and proportionately at all levels
during the second half of his reign.68
As
far as the conversions are concerned, Aurangzeb considered it legitimate
to encourage conversion to Islam as a
true follower of the faith, evidence of systematic or large scale attempts at
forced conversion is lacking. The measures adopted by Aurangzeb led a series of contradictions, which he found hard
to resolve and most of these measures were to
satisfy the orthodox clerical elements as far as possible. The
allegation that Aurangzeb’s measures were designed to convert India from
darul-harb or a land inhabited by infidels to
darul-islam or a land inhabited by Muslims. This is not quite
correct.
These
above mentioned liberal attitude and communal harmony lead to a composite Mughal culture,69 which we saw in the
morphology of the Mughal towns, such as Agra,
Fathpur Sikri, Surat, Ahmadabad etc. They were having a number of the
mercantile classes as their
relationship70 and were generally centres of commerce.71 These towns, apart
from the nobles and Mughal bureaucracy,
were inhabited by a multitude of religious scholars, both Hindu and Muslim,72 artisans and craftsmen
both skilled and unskilled, some self employed,
others in the service of the state.73 Not only that, in Shahjahanabad,
Cambay and Ahmadabad we get muhallas
with both Hindu and Muslim living in each other’s neighbourhood.74 This trend continued up till the eighteenth
century. The syncretic tendencies in urban centres were also influenced the education being imparted
to the general masses.75 The maktabs or schools
in the urban centres were catering to both the Muslim and Hindu students.
During the reign of Shahjahan,
Balkrishan Brahman ‘as per the tradition of the family’ was sent to study in
the maktab of Abdul Majid.76 It was he
who taught him how to write.77 In Banaras, Thatta, and Multan there were schools led by Brahmins
where both Hindus and Muslims were imparted
education.78
In
spite of Aurangzeb religious and political measures, the syncretic tendencies
in the Mughal Empire continued to
flourish side by side with the growing communal trends. Isardas Nagar, a contemporary of Aurangzeb, at one
place opines: ‘The difference of religions and
sects, which in reality affirm the being of God, should not be seen in
sectarian and communal light’.79
At
this juncture another question also arise that whether the Mughals imposed the shariat, the Islamic law on their non-Muslim
subjects, or, were the latter free to practice their own rules and regulations?
Badauni
informs us that Akbar had appointed pundits to administer justice.80 He
also appears to have given the Hindu
panchayats a formal place in the judicial system.81 Jadu Nath Sarkar mentions certain Sanskrit
judgements dating back to the reign of Akbar.82 That the non-Muslims were not subservient to the
Muslim law is further made clear from a farmān
of
Shahjahan issued in 1634 regarding the Madan Mohan temple of Brindavan,
Mathura. In this farmān, Shahjahan not
only refers to the worship taking place in the temple as ‘ibadat-i ilahi’ (divine worship) but also refers to
Hindus as khūda parast (God worshippers). Writing in 1759, Orme corroborates this view when he
says that the various sects of the “Gentoos”
(Hindus) in India were left free to follow their own religion and
observances.83 Mughal policy is more
explicitly stated in the Fatawa-i Ālamgiri that “Non-Muslims (zimmis) of a Muslim state were not subject to the laws of
Islam. Their legal relations were to be regulated according to the precepts of their own
faith”.84
In
spite of these tolerant tendencies the first recorded riot in a Mughal era took
place in 1711. On his accession to the
throne Shah Alam Bahadur Shah ordered the inclusion of the Shi’ite term wasi (vice regent) after the
name Ali in the khutba, which was opposed by the Muslim orthodoxy at Ahmadabad, Delhi and
Lahore.85 With the accession of Farrukhsiyar,
two riots erupt in 171286 and 1713 at Delhi and Ahmadabad,
respectively.87 It is quite interesting
to note that Ali Muhammad Khan hints that the riots were a result of trade
rivalry between the leader of the Bohra
merchants, Mulla Abdul Aziz and the nagarseth Kapur Chand Bhansali.88 In July 1720 communal
tension was witnessed in the city of Agra over the issue of an inter-religious marriage.
However, the actual riots were somehow averted.89 Subsequently, two other riots
occurred in Delhi in 1725 and 1729. The clash of 1729 was a result of yet another minor incident. A Hindu
jeweller was passing by in Chowk Sa’adullah
Khan, when someone let off a squib, which slightly burned his cloths.
His servants in retaliation attacked the
nearby shoe-makers shops and killed two Muslims. As at Ahmadabad, the Muslims shouted the slogan deen!deen! The
Qazi and the khatīb reportedly sides with the
Hindus and as a result faced the brunt of the Muslim mobs.
Athar
Abbas Rizvi while analyzing these riots of Delhi and Kashmir points out
the emergence of a ‘new leadership’ of
the Muslims who replaced the traditional Irani and Turani groups. This new group, comprising Arabs,
Abyssinians, Turks and Afghans, was according
to him in the forefront of these riots.90 Bayly on the other hand finds
that the undisciplined Afghan soldiers
behind these communal riots.91 Furthermore, these communal tensions and riots which erupted in the post-Aurangzeb
period were a result of the weakening of a strong political authority. In spite of its
weakness, we find that in almost all the incidents of strife, the Mughal state and officials sided not with
their co-religionists but the wronged. Thus it
would be wrong to call these early 18th century clashes “communal”,
although they do reflect a loosening of
social identities and a shrinking city space nurtured so carefully by Akbar
and his successors. They, if at all,
were the riots of vested interests from which the general masses remained aloof. The seeds sown by Akbar
bloomed until the dawn of the colonial rule in
India.
Notes
1
Christopher A. Bayly, ‘The Pre-History of Communalism: Religious Conflict in
India, 1700-1860’, Modern Asian Studies,
vol. 19, no. 2, 1985, pp. 177-203; Satish Saberwal, ‘The Long Road to the
Partition: Social and Historical
Perspective’, South Asian Survey, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001, pp. 237-47.
2
Brucle B. Lawrence, ‘Shahrastani on Indian Idol Worship’, Studia Islamica, No.
38, 1973, pp. 61-73. Shahrastani was the
first Muslim theologian to describe the Hindus as Sabians, Sabianism itself had
a long history as a quasi-historical,
quasi-theological phenomenon stretching back to the origin of Islam.
3
Romila Thapar, ‘Communalism and the Historical Legacy: Some Facts’, Social
Scientist, Vol. 18, No. 6/7, June-July,
1990, p. 4-20; See also Harbans Mukhia, ‘Communalism in the Writing of the
Medieval Indian History: A
Re-Appraisal’, Social Scientist, Vol. 11, No. 8, August 1983, pp. 58-65.
4
Muzaffar Alam, ‘State Building under the Mughals: Religion, Culture and
Politics’, Cashiers d’Asie Central,
L’Heritage Timouride: Iran-Asie Centrale-Inde, XVe-XVIIIe Siecles, No.
¾, 1997, pp. 105-128; Ian Copland, Asim
Roy & ala, A History of State and Religion in India, Routledge, New York,
2014
5
Those who own a God-sent book, i.e., Christians, Jews and Sabians, to whom the
Zorastrians and Hindus in India were
later added.
6
Annemarie Schimmel, ‘Religious Policies of the Great Mughals’, in Zeenut Ziad’s
edited The Magnificent Mughals, Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 2002, pp. 61-81.
7
Such as jazya, pilgrimage tax, distribution of royal charities through
Iltutmish (r. 1211-1236) by creating the
office of Shaikh ul Islam, and Sadr-us Sadur by Alauddin Khalji (d.
1316) etc.
8Insha-i
Abul Fazl, Lucknow, 1863, 1:63, cited from Muzaffar Alam, ‘Sharia and
Governance in the Indo Islamic Context’, in Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking
Religious Identities in Islamic South Asia, edited by David Gilmartin and Bruce B. Lawrance,
University Press of Florida, 2000, pp. 237-238.
9‘Abū’l
Fazl, Akbarnāma (c.1601), trans., H. Beveridge, Royal Asiatic Society,
Calcutta, 1897-1921, Vol. II, pp.
242-243.
10
Ibid., II, pp. 294-95.
11
They had full religious freedom under Muslim rule. The men are exempted from
military service. However, since their
lives, property and places of worship are protected, the able-bodied men have
to pay an exemption tax, jazya, in lieu
of military service. At the time of Firoz Shah (r.1351-1388), and even earlier,
the jazya was not levied on Brahmins.
But besides the jazya, an additional pilgrimage tax had been introduced by
some Muslim rulers. Annemarie Schimmel,
op. cit., p. 61.
12
Akbarnāma (c.1601), op. cit., II, pp. 316-317.
13
For the details of all land grant see Tarapada Mukherjee and Irfan Habib, ‘Land
Rights in the Reign of Akbar: The
Evidence of the Sale Deeds of Vrindaban and Antha’, PIHC, 50th Session,
Gorakhpur, 1989-90, pp. 249- 54.
14
K. M Jhaveri (ed.) Imperial Farmāns (AD 1577 to AD1803) granted to the
Ancestors…of the Tikayat Maharaj,
Bombay, 1928, Doc. II, Doc III is a similar order by Akbar’s mother, Hamida
Bano Begam in 1581. 15 Ibid., Doc. IIIA and IVA.
16
Ja’far Saljuqi’s Parwāna, G. D. Coll, cited from Irfan Habib’s, ‘Braj Bhum in
Mughal Times’, presented in the Indian
History Congress, 70th session, Delhi University, Delhi, 15-17 may, 2010, p.
300. 17 Khafi Khan, Muntakhab-ul Lubab,
pp. 93-95; see also M. Reza Pirbhai, Reconsidering Islam in a South Asian Context, Brill, 2009, p. 103
18
Akbarnāma (c.1601), op. cit., II, pp. 240-241.
19
Abū’l Fazl, Akbarnāma (c.1601), op. cit. III, pp. 594-595.
20
Ibid., III, p. 620.
21
See for other details M Athar Ali, The Apparatus of Empire: Awards of Ranks,
Offices and Titles to the Mughal Nobility, 1574-1658, Oxford University Press,
New Delhi, 1985.
22
‘Abū’l Fazl, Ā’īn-i Akbarī (c.1595), ed., H. Blochmann, Bib. Ind., Calcutta,
1867-77; eng. tr., Vol. I, by H.
Blochmann, Calcutta, 1868, pp. 102-113.
23
Som Prakash Verma, Mughal Painters and Their Work: A Biographical Survey and
Comprehensive Catalogue, Oxford
University Press, 1994 and Painting the Mughal Experience, Oxford University
Press, 2005; see also Geeti Sen,
Paintings from the Akbar Nama: A Visual Chronicle of Mughal India, Lustre
Press Pvt. Ltd, 1984.
24
Audrey Truschke, ‘Regional Perceptions: Writing to the Mughal Court in
Sanskrit’, Purusartha, Vol. 33, pp.
251-274 and ‘The Mughal Book of War: A Persian Translation of the
Sanskrit Mahabharata’, Comparative
Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Vol. 31, No. 2, 2011,
pp. 406-420.
25
For the details of Man Singh and other leading Hindu nobles of Akbar see ‘Abū’l
Fazl, Ā’īn-i Akbarī (c.1595), vol. I,
Ain- 30: The Grandees of the Empire, pp. 347, 353, and 361 etc. See also Shāh
Nawaz Khān, Ma’āsiru l Umarā (c.1742-80), ed., Maulvi Abdur Rahim and Maulvi
Mirza Ashraf Ali, Bib. Ind., 3 vols., Calcutta,
1888-91; tr. by H. Beveridge, Bib. Ind., Calcutta, 1911.
26
Jahāngir, Jahāngir-nāma or Tuzuk- i Jāhāngīrī (c.1624), ed., S. Ahmad, Ghazipur
and Aligarh, 1863-64; eng. tr.,
Alexander Rogers, ed., H. Beveridge, Vol. II, Low Price Publications, Delhi,
2006, pp. 49-52, 104-108. 27 Abul Fazl
does not use the word Din-i Ilahi but Tauhid-i Ilahi or Divine monotheism,
while Badauni uses both the terms.
28
The first mention of the new religion and its ten virtues are to be found in
Muhsin Fanis’s work, Dabistan-i Mazahib,
written during the latter part of Shahjahan’s reign. The virtues mentioned are
of a very general nature, such as
liberality and beneficence, loathing of evil, overcoming worldly lusts,
purification of the soul by yearning
after God etc.
29
According to him, “he [Akbar] has a strong desire to be looked upon, and
esteemed as a God, or some great
“Prophet”, and that he would have people believe that he performs
miracles, healing the sick with the water
with which he washed his feet”. See Fr. A. Monserrate, Commentary of his
Journey to the Court of Akbar, trans.,
J. S. Hoyland, annotated by S. N. Banerjee, reprint, Cuttack, 1922.
30
Muntakhāb-ut Tawārīkh (1595), II, p. 313.
31
The four degrees of faith introduced which are often confused with Din-i Ilahi
are first mentioned by Badauni in 1580.
These degrees consisted in ‘readiness to sacrifice to the Emperor property,
life, honour and religion. Whoever had
sacrificed these things possessed the four degrees, and whoever sacrifices one
of these four possessed one degree’.
There was nothing new in these degrees. Many Sufis had also asked their
disciples to make similar sacrifices.
Cited from Ataur Rahman, ‘Aurangzeb and His Policy’, Journal of the
Aligarh Historical Research Institute,
Vol. I, No. 1, April 1941, p. 110.
32
I. H. Qureshi, The Muslim Community of the Hind-Pakistan Subcontinent, Karachi,
1947. 33 ‘Abū’l Fazl, Ā’īn-i Akbarī
(c.1595), vol. I, Ain-77, pp. 170-175.
34
John F.Richards, The New Cambridge History of India I.5: The Mughal Empire,
Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp.
47-48.
35
Ibid, pp. 91-93.
36
‘Abdul Qadir Badauni, Muntakhāb-ut Tawārīkh (1595), ed. by Ahmad Ali and Lees,
Bib. Ind., Calcutta, 1864-69; tr. by
Lowe, vol. II, Royal Asiatic Society, Calcutta, 1924, p. 324; Akbarnāma
(c.1601), II, p. 262. See also Satish
Chandra, Medieval India: From Sultanate to the Mughals; Part Two: Mughal Empire
(1526- 1748), Har Anand Publications Pvt Ltd., New Delhi, 2011 (Revised
Edition), pp. 176-177.
37
Tuzuk- i Jāhāngīrī (c.1624), I, pp. 254-255.
38
Najaf Haider, ‘The Char Bahar of Balkrishan Brahman: A New Source for the
History of People and Places During Shahjahan’s Reign’, Workshop on The Mughal
Empire Under Shah Jahan New Trends of Research,
Institute of Iranian Studies and Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna,
May 2014 and ‘Translating Texts and
Straddling Worlds: Intercultural Communication in Mughal India’, in The
Varied Facets of History. Essays in
Honour of Aniruddha Ray, eds. Ishrat Alam and Syed Ejaz Hussain, Primus,
Delhi, 2011, pp. 115-124. 39 S. R. Sharma, op. cit., pp. 98-106.
40
Jadunath Sarkar, Studies in Mughal India, M. C. Sarkar & Sons, Calcutta,
1919.
41
Cited from Ataur Rahman, ‘Aurangzeb and His Policy’, Journal of the Aligarh
Historical Research Institute, Vol. I,
No. 1, April 1941, p. 110.
42
The Banaras farmān is in the National Library, Calcutta and the Vrindavan
farmān is presently in a temple at
Jaipur.
43
Saqi Musta’idd Khan, Ma’āsir-i Ālamgīrī, Bib. Ind. ed., Calcutta, 1870-73, p.
81.
44
Satish Chandra, Medieval India: Historiography, Religion and State in Medieval
India, Har Anand Publications Pvt. Ltd.,
New Delhi, 2004, pp. 165-166.
45
Ibid. Satish Chandra, Medieval India: From Sultanate to the Mughals; Part Two:
Mughal Empire (1526- 1748), Har Anand Publications Pvt Ltd., New Delhi, 2011
(Revised Edition), pp. 278-279. 46
Ma’āsir-i Ālamgīrī, p. 185; Satish Chandra, ‘Some Factors Leading to the Break
Between Aurangzeb and Rana Raj Singh’,
Proceedings of Indian History Congress, 1965.
47
Ma’āsir-i Ālamgīrī, pp. 186, 189.
48
Satish Chandra, Medieval India, Part Two, p. 279.
49
Richard M. Eaton, ‘Temple Desecration and Indo- Muslim States’, In Demolishing
Myths or Mosques and Temples, Sunil
Kumar (ed.), Three essays collective, 2008, pp. 93-95; see also Muzaffar Alam,
‘Sharia and Governance in the
Indo-Islamic Context’, op. cit., p. 26.
50
Richard M. Eaton, ‘Temple Desecration and Indo- Muslim States’, in Beyond Turk
and Hindu: Rethinking Religious
Identities in Islamic South Asia, edited by David Gilmartin and Bruce B.
Lawrance, University Press of Florida,
2000, pp. 246-281.
51
Satish Chandra, Medieval India: From Sultanate to the Mughals; Part Two,
p.279. 52 Vrindaban Documents, NAI
2671/12 and 2671/13.
5353
Govinda Dev temple documents, cited from Irfan Habib, ‘Braj Bhum in Mughal
Times’, op. cit., p. 306; 54 Ibid., p.
306; R. A. Alvi, ‘The Temples of Vrindaban and Their Priest During the Reign of
Aurangzeb’, Proceedings of Indian
History Congress, 1988.
55
Irfan Habib, ‘Braj Bhum in Mughal Times’, op. cit., p. 301.
56
See the calendar of these annexed to Tarapada Mukherjee and Irfan Habib, ‘Land
Rights in the Reign of Akbar: the
Evidence of the Sale Deeds of Vrindaban and Antha’, PIHC, 50th session,
Gorakhpur, 1989-90, pp. 249-54.
57
Tarapada Mukherjee and Irfan Habib, ‘Akbar and the Temples of Mathura and its
Environs’, PIHC, 48th session, Goa,
1987, pp. 234-250 for an analysis of this farmān. The original is in the
National Archives of India and a copy in
G. D. Collec, and another in M. M. Coll; See also Irfan Habib, ‘Raipur: Land
Holdings and Land Contrl in a Braj village
in Mughal Times’, paper presented in the Indian History Congress, 72nd session,
Punjabi University, Patiala, 10-12 December, 2011, pp. 157-165.
58
Tarapada Mukherjee and Irfan Habib, \The Mughal Administration and the Temples
of Vrindavan during the Reigns of
Jahangir and Shahjahan’, PIHC, 49th session, Dharwad, 1988, pp. 287-300. 59 ‘Abdul Hamīd lāhorī, Pādshāhnāma
(1654-55), ed., Kabir Al-Din Ahmad, Abd Al-Rahim and W.N. Lees, vol. I, part i,
Bib. Ind., Calcutta, 1866-72, p. 452;
60
John F.Richards, The New Cambridge History of India I.5: The Mughal Empire, p.
122. 61 For details Inayat Khan,
Shāhjahān-nāma, edited by E. Bedley and Z. A. Desai, Delhi, 1990, p. 154; S.
Ram Sharma, The Religious Policy of the
Mughal Emperors, Asia Publishing House, London, 2nd Edition, 1962, pp. 86-87.
62
Cf. Ataur Rahman, ‘Aurangzeb and His Policy’, Journal of Aligarh Historical
Research Institute, Vol. I, No. 1, April
1941, p. 112; see also Harbans Mukhia, The Mughals of India, Blackwell
Publishing, USA, 2004, pp. 26-29.
63
Yohannan Friedmann, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi: An Outline of His Thought and a
Study of His Image in the Eyes of
Posterity, Montreal, 1971, p. 82.
64
S. Ram Sharma, op. cit., pp. 86-87; Ataur Rahman, op. cit., p. 112-113; Harbans
Mukhia, op. cit., p. 33. 65 Tuzuk- i
Jāhāngīrī (c.1624), op.cit., pp. 51, 332; Also see the S. R. Sharma, The
Religious Policy of the Mughal Emperors,
op. cit. p. 62.
66
M. Athar Ali, The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb, Oxford University Press,
1997, p. 31. 67 Ibid., pp. 31-32.
68 There is no doubt that the expansion of
the nobility under Aurangzeb, particularly after 1681, brought about an increase of Hindus at all levels of the
army, nobility and administration. Studies by M. Athar Ali (The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb, Oxford
University Press, 1997, p. 31) indicate that among the mansabdars holding ranks
above 500 zat the proportion of Hindus increased from 22 per cent under Akbar
in 1595, to 32 per cent under Aurangzeb
in the period 1679-1707.
69
For other details of Mughal composite culture, one may see Syed Ali Nadeem
Rezavi, ‘The Dynamics of Composite
Culture: Evolution of an Urban Social Identity in Mughal India’, local volume
of papers presented in Indian History
Congress, 72nd Session, Punjabi University, Patiala, 10-12 December, 2011 by
Aligarh Historians Society, 2011, pp.
137-149.
70
See for example Sebastian Manrique, Travels of Manrique S. J., tr. C. E. Luard
& Hosten, London, 1914, vol. II, p.
140.
71
Abul Fazl, Akbarnāma,Bib. Ind., Calcutta, 1873-87, vol. II, p. 356; Ain-i
Akbari, ed. Blochmann, Bib. Ind.,
Calcutta, 1867-77, vol. II, p. 240; Francois Pelsaert, Remonstratie or
Jahangir’s India, tr. W. H. Moreland &
P. Geyl, Cambridge, 1925, p. 9.
72
See Abdul Qadir Badauni, Muntakhab ut Tawārīkh, ed. Ahmad Ali & Lees,
Bib.Ind., Calcutta, 1864-69, vol. II,
pp. 206, 275-276 etc; Ain-i Akbari, op. cit., pp. 268-70; Pelsaert, p. 77;
Tavernier, Travels in India, 1640- 67, tr. V. Ball, London, 1925, vol. II, p.
242.
73
Ain-i Akbari, I, pp. 294-301; Ali Muhammad Khan, Mīrāt-i Ahmadī, ed. Nawab Ali,
Baroda, 1927, vol. I, pp. 286-87; see
also Manrique, op. cit., II, p. 147; Tavernier, op. cit., II, p. 73; Pelsaert,
op. cit., p. 46. 74 See for example a
number of documents preserved in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. For
example NAI 2695/6, 8, 14, 16; NAI
2702/6; NAI 1364 etc.
75
See for example J. J. Roy Burman, ‘Hindu-Muslim Syncretism in India’, Economic
and Political Weekly, Vol. 31, No. 20,
May 18, 1996, pp. 11-15, Gail Minault Graham, ‘Akbar And Aurangzeb- Syncretism
and Separatism in Mughal India A
Re-Examination’, The Muslim World, Vol. 59, Issue 2, April 1969, pp. 106-
126.
76
Letter of Jalāl Hisāri and Bālkrishan Brahman, BM. MS. Add. 16859 (Rotograph in
the Research Library, CAS in History,
AMU, Aligarh), f. 97 (a). See also Surat Singh, Tazkira-i Pīr Hassu Tēli, MS.,
Research Library, Department of History, AMU, Aligarh, f. 120 (a). Shan Sarang
Surat Singh, the author of Tazkira-i Pīr
Hassu Tēli, a petty bureaucrat during the reign of Shahjahan was similarly
educated and trained at Lahore by Abdul
Karm.
77
Ibid., ff. 65 (a)- 67 (b).
78
For their description (imparting ‘vile learning’) and ultimate destruction by
Aurangzeb, see Saqi Musta’id Khan, Ma’āsir-i
Ālamgīrī, Calcutta, 1870-73, p. 81.
79
Isardas Nagar, Futūhāt-i Ālamgīrī, BM. MS. Add. 24884 (Rotograph in Research
Library, CAS in History, AMU, Aligarh)
ff. 4 (a)- 5.
80
Badauni, Muntakhab-ut Tawarīkh, Calcutta, 1864, p. 356.
81
Monserrate, p. 183; For the panchayat and its acceptance down to the reign of
Aurangzeb, see Bilgram Documents, nos.
21, 26.
82
Sir J. N. Sarkar, Mughal Administration, 1954, p. 101.
83
Robert Orme, Historical Fragments, pp. 280-81.
84
Fatawa-i Alamgiri, tr. S. Amir Ali, ed., A. Rehman, Lucknow, 1932, II, p.
357.
85
Shaikh Muhammad Murad, ‘An Untitled History of Aurangzeb and His Successors’,
Bodleian, MS. Fraser no. 262, ff. 75
(b)-92 (b), cf. S. Athar Abbas Rizvi, Shah Waliullah and His Times: A Study of
Eighteenth Century Islam, Politics and
Society in India, Canberra, 1980, pp. 112-114.
86
Khafi Khan, Muntakhab ul Lubāb, Vol. II, Calcutta, 1850-74, pp. 757-60.
87
Najaf Haider, “ A ‘Holi Riot’ of 1714: Versions From Ahmedabad and Delhi”, in
Living together Separately: Cultural
India in History and Politics, edited by Mushirul Hasan and Asim Roy, Oxford
University Press, 2005, pp.
127-144.
88
Mirāt, op. cit., I, pp. 405-406.
89
Khafi Khan, op. cit., II, pp. 884.
90
S. Athar Abbas Rizvi, Shah Waliullah and His Times, op. cit., pp. 219-220.
91
C. A. Bayly, ‘The Pre-History of Communalism? Religious Conflict in India,
1700-1860’, vol. 19, no. 2, 1985, pp. 177-203;
see also Sammyh S. Khan and Ragini Sen, ‘Where Are We Going? Perspective on
Hindu Muslim Relations in India’, in C. J. Montiel (eds.), Peace Psychology in
Asia, Springer, 2009, pp. 43-64.